Message for the Japan Foundation Awards

I received a Japan Foundation Award in 2018, a little before the start of the pandemic. With the beginning of the pandemic, my life changed a lot. Until then, I regularly went back and forth between Europe and Japan, but after the pandemic started, I only made the trip two to three times a year. There were many performances overseas during this time, but I participated in the practices through Zoom, and also experienced listening to televised concerts without audiences from my home in Japan. This was very different from actually going to a location and experiencing a performance there, and while physically easy, I still feel that if you don’t experience music live by going to where it is being played, something is lacking.

Finally, at the end of last year, we were able to hold concerts with an audience, and I had more opportunities to travel to Europe. I was involved in world-premiere performances of the flute concerto "Ceremony" in September 2022, with the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich and soloist, Emmanuel Pahud, and of the violin concerto "Prayer" in March 2023, with the Berliner Philharmoniker and soloist, Kashimoto Daishin. Both of these works were based on the shamanistic themes of ritual and prayer. During the pandemic, I asked myself what I, as a composer, could do. And I thought that the roots of music lie in ritual, in prayer. Many people died during the pandemic, and then a tragic war started in Ukraine. I came to believe that in such times, music enables us to pray and sing requiems for the dead.

In Japan, there are a lot of Buddhist statues and images. These are not just located in splendid temples—many stone Buddhas continue to pray while exposed to the wind and the rain on roadsides. And the people who created these are mostly anonymous. These sculptures of prayer may not exert any direct power in reality, but they surely support us somewhere deep inside. I hope that my small works of music can echo in the corners of the world, like those anonymous Buddha statues.

I have an idea for a new opera, and asked Tawada Yoko, who won a Japan Foundation Award at the same time as me, to work on the libretto. The text is already complete, and I will compose the music over the next year or so based on this. If a new opera is born thanks to our meeting at the Japan Foundation Awards, I hope you will all view it. Its title is, "Natasha". The theme is the destruction of the global environment.

HOSOKAWA Toshio

(Original text in Japanese)

The Japan Foundation Awards (2018)